


this is gospel, for the fallen ones

by eleutheria_has_won



Series: Prompt Me! fills [12]
Category: The Underland Chronicles - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Child Soldiers, Coping, Flashbacks, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, yet another story about Gregor coping with his heaping helping of trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-09
Updated: 2015-07-09
Packaged: 2018-04-08 08:34:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4297899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eleutheria_has_won/pseuds/eleutheria_has_won
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"This is Gospel by Panic at the Disco "The gnashing teeth and grim tongues conspire against the odds, but they haven't seen the best of us yet.""</p><p>A story about the things you do to survive. </p><p>[[From a Prompt Me! on thecityofregalia.tumblr.com . Head there if you want to submit a prompt of your own.]]</p>
            </blockquote>





	this is gospel, for the fallen ones

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Oboeist3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oboeist3/gifts).



> eeeeeeeee yes I have feels about this song yes I do.
> 
> and now I have Gregor feels about this song and so do you :3

Every night the memories drag him down.

Every day again he rises. 

He has scars. This is one of Gregor’s truths. They’ll never really be gone. This is another one. 

His scars are seams, and when he loosens the wires things come pouring out of the gaps in his skin - memories, spare parts, bits of prophecy, missing time. It hisses as it escapes, like toxic gases, and also like the accusations of a thousand souls he couldn't save. His own was one of them. Green and poisonous and better left alone, these things come pouring out between the wires in the gaps. The rifts in his skin is an oracle, and like Delphi, he’s going insane. 

Only most nights, though. 

The human being is the most adaptable creature on earth. It can learn to live with almost anything. It can learn to live with insanity. It can learn to live with pain.

He has triggers now. He's been informed that's what they're called. The taste of copper sets him off. It’s close enough to blood that he can’t really tell the difference. It sits heavy and thick and vile on his tongue. It tastes like murder. It tastes like fear. He won’t be able to distinguish what’s real until someone washes the taste out for him. 

His chest hurts, most of the time. Sometimes the scar makes it tough to breathe.

He’s all into pieces, but here’s the secret: the pieces aren’t coming apart.

(This is one of Gregor’s truths: )

He’s surviving.

His hand’ll lock up, sometimes. The most innocuous things will trigger it. It goes stiff, his fingers barely able to flex, tendons sticking up and aching like one big muscle cramp. Sometimes he'll feel the phantom sensation of a claw, bigger than any ordinary bat's, clenched tightly in his grip. He'll be holding on so tightly to something that isn't even there. Sometimes he’s not even aware that something’s pinged off his brain at the wrong angle, until he goes to do something with his right hand and finds it unusable. 

There’s nothing he can do, when it happens. He just has to give it some time. 

That, too, is one of his truths. Time won't heal anything, but it'll at least give him the space to carry on. 

He’s all into splinters and shards and shattering parts, but there’s a trick to it, because he knows all the gaps in between. He taught himself the topography of his brokenness well. All his demons and bugbears, he’s gotten to know them; he’s coaxed them gibbering out of the shadows and learned each and every one of their names. He’s real good friends with all his missing parts. 

His brain is a bag of bats and rats, all grim gnashing teeth and grinning ugly tongues, but they’re his and he knows them. 

Sometimes he can still feel the stitches in his chest coming out, one loop after the other.  _Snickt_ ,  _snickt_ ,  _snickt_. Taking them all out took almost two hours, tiny pinpricks of pain all down his chest. He went back to the cave, right there in the infirmary under Howard's hands, half a dozen times before it was over.  _Snickt_ ,  _snickt_ ,  _snickt_.

Sometimes the dreams get to him.

That’s when he pulls up his boot straps and tightens his belt and grins to bear it and grown bull horns for stubbornness and makes lemonade that’s far too sour (but just a little bit sweet.)

Once a child like him, pale as ice, carved a hole out of Gregor’s heart. He’ll never really be gone. Once a killer like him, pale as ice, got inside Gregor’s chest. She’ll never really be gone. 

Once a warrior like him, black as night, got his throat torn out messily and died because Gregor wasn’t quick enough. 

That’ll never be gone. 

But once an outcast like him found another outcast who _was_ him, and they had each other.

That’ll never be gone, either.

This is one of Gregor’s truths: He’s going to keep surviving.

He can’t be alone in the dark anymore. If it’s too quiet - if he’s the only thing breathing - he start having some pretty funny thoughts, there in the dark. Like what if he never left that cave. What if he’s still there, bleeding out with Ares. 

(The truth is: he's alive. That truth is his.)

Large amounts of smoke or uncontrolled fire will make him throw up, as will sulphur, and the smell of burning meat. When they learned about the Holocaust in school, he sat stone-faced and emotionless -- almost bored -- through the entire lesson; when the bell rang, he left the room without a sound. Then he went to the bathroom and locked the door; went into a stall and locked himself in there, too; and cried silently for the rest of the day.

He isn’t coming apart at the seams, but that doesn’t mean the seams stop being there. His skin is full of cracks and holes. He’s bound them together, stitched them up with bailing wire, and when he loosens the wires all the pain and screaming starts coming out through the gaps. The gaps are still there, though, and he knows all their names. He stitched them up, one by one, all on his own.

(These are Gregor’s truths.)

Only he can save himself.

His hip is always going to feel empty and weightless without a sword.

He wakes up crying and screaming.

But only most nights.


End file.
